


Disorder

by Filthy_Bunny



Category: Prison Break
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chaptered, M/M, Mental Illness, Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:38:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filthy_Bunny/pseuds/Filthy_Bunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Michael Scofield has escaped from Fox River Psychiatric Hospital in order to seek out the father of LJ, his friend in need. He has no idea that Lincoln Burrows might just hold the missing pieces of his life, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

****

Michael dreamed that the orderlies at Fox River were holding him down on a metal gurney and drilling his teeth. He awoke to find that his head had slid down to rest against the window beside his seat, and the vibrations of the bus had been making his whole skull shudder. He sat up, stretching his limbs as much as the cramped legroom allowed, and sighed with relief. He was out of that place now. The bus was dark and cosy around him and the other passengers were silent. Through the glass was nothing but blackness, broken only by the occasional light in a farmhouse. Perhaps by now they had crossed the border from Minnesota into North Dakota. It already felt like an eternity since Michael had climbed aboard the Greyhound back in Chicago. He had no idea what time it was or how long he had slept, and for once in his strictly ordered life he didn’t care. It was nice to simply be free and on his way, in this sleeping, nowhere space between locations, a peaceful limbo that would be gone only too soon.

He smiled and let his eyes drift closed again.

 

***

 

Later, _many_ hours later, Michael sat with his third refill of coffee and watched the rain steadily pounding the street outside through the steamed-up window of a cafe. The snug sense of excitement he had felt that first night on the bus was long gone, replaced with nerves, confusion and acute physical discomfort. Drinking so much coffee had been a bad idea – it sloshed uneasily in his stomach and added to the buzz in his head. Then there was the matter of how quickly it filled his bladder, necessitating repeated visits to the cafe’s restroom, and Michael _hated_ using public restrooms. But there was precious little else to do while he sat and waited. He was too on edge to read, and far too socially awkward to strike up conversation with a stranger.

He tapped the blunt ends of his fingernails against the tabletop – making sure to apply equal pressure to each fingertip; these things always had to be perfectly balanced – and tried not to think about what a huge mistake he had likely made in coming here. He had travelled for almost three days and passed through six states on a series of buses and, for the final leg of his journey, the cab of a freight truck to reach his destination: Rockmond, Washington. A small logging town not far from the Canadian border. He had never ventured further west than Madison, Wisconsin before, and now he felt so very far from his home in Chicago that he may as well have been on a different planet.

He turned away from the window and his head swam queasily. The withdrawal had started to kick in the day before, somewhere in the middle of Montana. During a rest stop he had climbed out of the little nest he’d made in his seat, and almost lost his balance as the nausea and dizziness hit. Hoping it was no more than motion sickness, he had gotten off the bus and stretched his legs, breathing the fresh, clean air of this foreign state into his lungs. But those twinges had only been the start of his misery. For the remainder of the journey he had slept as much as possible to blot out the sickness, and still all he wanted to do was crawl into a cool bed in a darkened room and find oblivion. His brain seemed to roll around in his head like a sponge in a bucket of water; his eyes were too sensitive and felt as though they were grinding like pebbles in their sockets. When he was fortunate enough for his mind to wander from his condition, the occasional muscle spasm or stomach cramp would come along and jolt him back to attention.

He was furious with himself for such a foolish oversight. Back in his neat, white room in Fox River, his plan had seemed flawless. Perhaps it was through arrogance that he had neglected to take his medications into consideration; for a long time he had assumed they were ineffective and only continued to take them to avoid unnecessary conflict with the nurses. He knew the strength of his own mind and believed it could overcome any physical limitations. But even if he was right and the drugs hadn’t been giving him any benefit, they had still been leaving their mark on his body and brain, silting up his system, and now the pills had stopped coming his pathetic organism was kicking up an ungodly fuss.

Michael looked back out at the rainy street. All that water, falling endlessly... and dammit, now he had to pee again. He picked up his backpack, shuffled out of his seat and crossed the cafe to the door in the back corner. On his way past, a couple of young women looked up and watched him with strange smiles on their faces. He had noticed them come in half an hour or so earlier, and they had given him an odd look then, too. He passed their table and heard one of them whisper excitedly to the other. He felt a pang of anxiety and hurried to reach the bathroom. God, this was horrible; not one person here knew his history, and yet somehow this pair of strangers had already picked up on the fact that he didn’t belong here, that there was something _not right_ about him. The waitress, too, had behaved strangely, looking him over a little too intensely when he had first ordered, and returning to his table to check up on him rather more often than seemed appropriate.

This was the other major factor he had underestimated in his careful plotting, something even more critical to his success than his state of health: People. Michael wasn’t very good with people. Even with his brilliant mind, he had never quite figured out how to predict what others would do in a given situation. He supposed he shouldn’t judge himself too harshly for that; the field of psychology had still barely scraped the surface of the complexities of human behaviour. And the psychiatrists at Fox River – some of them highly intelligent individuals whom Michael had respect, if not affection, for – had failed to make any sense of him, one single patient, even after hundreds of hours of therapy.

Safely stowed in the bathroom, Michael used the toilet and then scrubbed his hands thoroughly. He looked in the mirror above the washbasin and took a few deep breaths. He prayed that when the time came, he would be able to relate to the one person who was central to the entire plan. A cold rush of anxiety shot through his body as he realised that he would be having that conversation _today_ , probably within the next couple of hours. His stomach roiled and his hands became clammy with sweat again. He rinsed them under the cold faucet and splashed some water onto his face.

“You can do this,” he said aloud to his reflection. “You _have_ to do this. For LJ.”

 

***

 

At five thirty, Michael was standing in the rain watching the parking lot across the street. The squat building at the back of the lot bore a peeling sign above its doors that read _Wade & Sons Logging_. The cars and trucks parked outside were mostly old and worse for wear. From beneath the sodden hood of his sweatshirt, Michael glanced up at the pine-covered mountains that loomed above the little town. The peaks were hidden by thick cloud, making the mountains half-ghostly. The man he had come all this way to meet must up there somewhere. At some point he would be finishing up a day’s work and returning to the town, and then Michael could make contact. Until then there was little for him to do but wait in this rain.

He wished he’d stayed in his motel room longer. The driver he had hitched a lift with from Seattle had dropped him at a truck stop about half a mile outside Rockmond that morning. The place had a small cafeteria and some motel-style rooms housed in a two storey building behind the parking lot. Michael had rented a room for the night, as it was unlikely he would be able to finish up his business here and arrange a return trip before the day was out. The room smelled musty and wasn’t very clean, and the carpet and curtains looked as though they had been in place since long before Michael was born, but it would have to suffice. He had taken a shower and then lain on the bed, hoping to sleep for a few hours. When that proved impossible, he had dressed and walked along the highway into town. Upon reaching Rockmond’s main intersection, he had taken the notebook from his backpack and flipped through the pages to a hand-drawn map. He had sketched the directions several days earlier after searching online for Wade & Sons. Michael walked along the main street and up a steep road until he arrived at the company’s headquarters.

He had gathered his courage and entered the building, where he had spoken to a kind-faced lady who seemed to be the office manager. She had told him that yes, the man in question was indeed working today, and the crew usually arrived back from the logging site at around six. With the hours stretching ahead of him, Michael had needed somewhere to sit and pass the rest of the afternoon. His first choice, the library, had turned out to be closed for the day when he eventually found it. And so, after shopping for a few supplies – underwear, toothbrush, aspirin – he had ended up in the cafe with its strange waitress and endless refills of coffee.

After what felt like an eternity of rain-drenched misery, a truck finally pulled up across the street and a group of men piled out of it and into the Wade & Sons offices. Michael drummed his fingers rapidly against his thighs as he waited for the men to emerge. His shoes squished deeper into the mud by the side of the road while the anxiety built higher and higher in his chest. It was only as he had stood watching the men climb out of the truck – men who all seemed to be burly and big and strangely intimidating in their overt maleness – that Michael remembered he had absolutely no idea what Lincoln Burrows, Senior looked like.

Even with all the delicate planning of his escape and his cross-country journey, he had underestimated the importance of that one piece of information. The current stage of his plan had been summed up in three simple words, _Find Lincoln Burrows_ ; a bullet point that fell between _Locate Wade & Sons Logging,_ and _Explain LJ’s situation_ on his long list of steps. He hadn’t expected it to be an issue. Surely someone here at the company’s office would point him in the right direction and he and Lincoln Sr could have their much-needed conversation. And yet, as the men began to stroll back out into the parking lot, it suddenly seemed like a daunting obstacle. He watched them talk and laugh and spit and scratch their beards, and did not relish the thought of walking over to the group to ask around for LJ’s father. They were – well, he didn’t like to make sweeping generalisations based on appearance alone when there were so many other contributing factors to consider but basically they just weren’t _like him_ ; he didn’t belong here. And they would know it.

Michael stalled, scanning the faces for a clue to Burrows’ identity. From this distance none of them seemed to bear any familial resemblance to LJ (but then again, LJ was younger and usually _clean_ and his face was shaven and neat whereas the rain-washed, mud-spattered loggers in their beaten-up clothing were so dirty it made Michael’s skin prickle). As he stood squinting across the street, someone crossed his field of vision on the near side of the parking lot, and Michael noticed that one of the men had left the building separately from the others and was now unlocking the door of his truck.

Michael decided to take advantage of the moment, and hurried across the street before he could talk himself out of it.

“Excuse me,” he said, approaching the stranger’s truck. The man stopped with his car door open and looked Michael over without speaking. “Do you know where I could find Lincoln Burrows?”

The guy was still eyeing him with a hard look that didn’t help ease Michael’s paranoid tendencies. Did he look like a crazy person? Did his body language or accent single him out as weird? Was he dressed too strangely for the backwoods tastes of Nowheresville, Washington? He fought the urge to check himself over.

Finally the guy spoke. “I might.”

Michael waited, but no further information was forthcoming. “Oh,” he said, stumped by this person’s deliberate unhelpfulness. “Um, would you be able to point me in the right direction? It’s important that I speak with him.”

“What about?”

“I... should really speak to Mr Burrows himself about that.”

“Fine. Who should I say’s looking for him?”

“My name is Alexander Mahone, I work at the... uh...” He stopped. Lincoln’s colleagues may not be aware that his son was in a mental institution, so it was unwise to start broadcasting the fact. “I work with his son,” he said instead.

The man’s already dark brow lowered in a frown of concern. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the other workers milling around the office and parking lot.

“Get in,” he said, looking back at Michael and jerking his thumb toward the passenger side of his truck.

“Excuse me?” Michael asked uneasily, and automatically took a step backward. Then the penny dropped. “Ah. You’re Lincoln.”

Michael supposed this was good luck. What were the chances he would have found LJ’s father on his first try? Even so, his heart sank. This man had an intensity about him that made Michael feel less at ease instead of more. He was only an inch or two taller than Michael, but his hostile manner made him seem bigger. And meaner. Beneath his moody brow, the grey eyes fixed on Michael were cool with suspicion. He was broad-shouldered and strong, and had that vigorous, outdoors-y vitality that Michael associated with athletes and firemen and fishermen and... well, _loggers_ ; people who could, essentially, pound the crap out of Michael without so much as grazing their knuckles.

Michael wasn’t sure what he had expected, but probably someone a little older and more... fatherly? Which he now understood was a ridiculous notion. But he didn’t feel comfortable talking to this man even out in the open, never mind getting into a (probably filthy) truck alone with him. He drew a breath deep into his lungs and held it for a few seconds. _For LJ_ , he told himself for the thousandth time that day. _You can do this for LJ._ He nodded and walked around the truck’s rusting bonnet to the passenger side.

The inside of the truck smelled damp and a little earthy, with the added chemical tang of a pine air freshener that dangled from the rear view mirror. Michael watched nervously as Burrows kicked mud off the soles of his boots against the front tire and then climbed into the driver’s seat. His clothes were work-faded and half plastered with mud, worn and torn by a thousand snags on unruly branches. A weekend’s growth of stubble shaded his jaw. He sat back and turned those disarming grey eyes on Michael once more.

“What was your name again?”

“Mahone,” Michael replied. “Alex.” He wasn’t happy with the lie, particularly under Burrows’ scrutinous gaze, but he had decided ahead of time that it would be better to use a cover – at least at first – than to introduce himself as a patient. People generally didn’t place much confidence in escaped lunatics.

“You’re LJ’s psychiatrist?”

“One of them, yes.”

“You look a little young to be a shrink.”

“Well... I’m older than I look.” That was true at least.

“So what the hell is going on? Is LJ all right?”

“LJ’s fine,” Michael said quickly, and held his hands up to reassure Burrows. “But some things have come to my attention that I need to discuss with you.”

Lincoln’s eyebrows raised cynically. “Face to face? _Here_? What, you don’t have a phone at the hospital?”

“It seems the contact details we had on file were out of date,” Michael said, which he supposed was also true. “When we tried—” He broke off suddenly as he noticed a dark stain on Burrows’ hand. “Um, you’re bleeding.”

Lincoln looked down and turned his hand over, revealing a lot more blood on his palm. Much of it was dried and caked on, but it appeared he was still bleeding from a deep gash on the edge of his hand. He placed his hand back on the wheel dismissively and looked back at Michael. “I’m fine,” he said. “So what’s happened?”

“Are you sure? It looks like you need stitches.”

“I’m _fine_ , now focus,” Burrows insisted.

“Okay,” Michael said, but found he had become tongue-tied. He frowned and tried to focus his thoughts. He had known this would not be the easiest of conversations, because LJ’s father would be alarmed and would no doubt have a lot of questions, and that was why Michael had planned out what he would say with such great care. The only problem was that his memory had chosen this moment to fail him. His nerves had tangled every thought in his head into an unintelligible mess.

“Is there somewhere a little more, uh, comfortable where we could go to discuss this?” he asked in a last ditch attempt to gain some breathing space. This only seemed to set off more of Burrows’ alarm bells. He watched Michael sharply, eyes narrowing. Michael felt like a bug under a microscope.

“Who are you?” Lincoln asked.

Michael’s anxiety hit a new peak. He stared back, unable to formulate a response. Lincoln knew he was lying. He was already suspicious and now he wouldn’t trust a word of what Michael had to say. This was all wrong, wrong, _wrong_. They should be having this conversation somewhere quiet and still where he could relax and start from the beginning and take his time. Not crammed into a junky old truck with rain bouncing off the roof while Burrows scrutinised him and demanded answers.

With a sense of bottomless dread, Michael could feel the beginnings of one of his attacks. It had been such a long time since he suffered one that he had come to believe they were finally behind him. The smells mingling in the air, the blood on Burrows’ hand, the sound of the rain and his own nausea were all becoming magnified and distorted, his senses bleeding into one another. Soon he would be too overwhelmed with input to even keep his eyes open, and logical thought – let alone speech – would become impossible. He tried to breathe normally but his lungs were impossibly tight. He was in danger of hyperventilating.

Before he could descend into full-blown panic in the passenger seat, Michael did the only think he could think of. He opened the door of the truck, jumped out, and fled.

 


	2. Chapter 2

****

Lincoln had had one bitch of a day.

First of all, he had barely slept thanks to the family of squirrels or raccoons or goddamn grizzly bears or whatever the hell it was currently making itself at home in the roof of his rental house. So much for life being quieter out in the sticks.

The mountainside had been lashed with rain for most of the day, soaking the entire crew to the skin, turning the ground to mush and reducing visibility on the slopes, all of which made their job harder, slower and more dangerous. Tempers had frayed by mid-morning; by lunchtime, insults and threats were being tossed back and forth; by mid-afternoon there were punches thrown. Lincoln wasn’t exactly blessed with the patience of a saint, but the way these guys let their petty dramas blow up into fisticuffs was ridiculous. He’d had to prise apart two separate scuffles between Glenn, the yarder operator, and Justin, one of the new hookers (yeah, they use hooks. Laugh it up; hooker jokes get old pretty fast in logging). With two members of their crew MIA for the day – probably sleeping off weekend hangovers – and the downpour cutting productivity even further, this was exactly the kind of shit they did not need.

To make matters worse, he had lost his footing in the mud during one of his many hikes down the slope and caught his hand on a broken-off branch. It had punctured his glove and torn open the side of his palm. His hands had been so numbed by the icy rain that he’d been able to ignore it for the last couple of hours on the mountain, but by the time he got back into town it was starting to pulse with pain.

Then, to top it all off, he got back to the office only to learn that some stranger was looking for him. Marge Wade, the boss’ wife and the woman who all but ran the financial side of the company, had told Lincoln that a young man had come by asking about him. He wasn’t a local, since Marge knew damn near everybody in Rockmond and she’d never seen this man’s face before. _And trust me, I would have remembered one_ that _pretty,_ she had informed him (as though Lincoln would care), then giggled and added _Don’t tell Earl!_ (as though Lincoln would bother). Her description of the guy had been innocuous enough, but the news put Lincoln on alert. He had left some unpaid debts back in Chicago; debts that he had fully intended to pay off, but before he’d been given the opportunity to do so he had been very firmly persuaded to leave the city by the same men he owed money to. As far as he was aware, his slate had been wiped clean on the condition that he made himself scarce, but perhaps someone had decided they were no longer happy with the arrangement. Still, it seemed a little extreme to send someone all the way out to the mountains of Washington to collect.

The nervous stranger who approached him in the parking lot certainly didn’t look like any of the thugs Lincoln had dealt with in the past. But if that fact provided him with any relief, it was short-lived. The stranger had told him that LJ was in some kind of trouble. No, he hadn’t said that exactly – only that there was something he needed to discuss with Lincoln – but then he had upped and vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared, leaving Lincoln with nothing but a head full of troubling questions about what might be happening to his son on the other side of the goddamn country.  

He had driven after the guy, cruised around a few blocks trying to spot him, but ‘Alex’ had been particularly light on his feet and had already disappeared. Out of ideas, Lincoln had driven home. It was practically dark by the time he let himself into the house, and he was bone tired, hungry, cold, damp and dirty. But before he could take care of his own comforts he needed to be sure LJ was safe.

He didn’t have a number for the hospital, because Lisa and her dipshit husband had always wriggled out of giving him one, but he knew the name of the place. Fox River Psychiatric Institute. He called a friend in Chicago and had them look it up for him, then said a quick goodbye and dialled the number he’d jotted down for the main switchboard.

The woman who answered was one of those impatient, deliberately unhelpful types who despise dealing with people yet somehow still manage to get jobs answering phones. She flatly refused to give out any information about LJ, no matter what Lincoln told her about his relationship to the patient, and when he changed tack and asked if she could tell him anything about a Dr Alex Mahone she shut him down again. The hospital could have been burning down around her and this bitch would have reeled off the exact same script. Under normal circumstances he would have told her where she could shove her patronising tone, but he had other priorities. Besides, that was probably what she expected. He decided his best option was to wear her down with sheer persistence.

It worked. Eventually she tired of Lincoln’s badgering and put him through to LJ’s ward more to get rid of him than out of any sympathy for his concerns. Fortunately the nurse he spoke to next – a Latino-sounding guy named Felipe or Fernando or something like that – was far more agreeable. He knew LJ and assured Lincoln that he was fine. He was able to share a little more about Dr Mahone, too, which confirmed Lincoln’s suspicions about the young man he’d met earlier. Fernando or Felipe gave the same spiel about not being able to give out any information about patients over the phone, but he had the good grace to sound apologetic about it, and did agree after a little pleading to take Lincoln’s number and see if he could arrange for LJ to call him back.

Lincoln sat staring at the phone for a few minutes after the conversation had ended, not sure if he felt any better or not. On the one hand he had the nurse’s word that LJ was safe, and that was the most important thing. On the other hand, it made his encounter with the strange young man in the parking lot all the more confusing. Had he really known LJ? Or had it just been an excuse to get his attention before... what? The man had run away before he’d had chance to do or say anything more. And Lincoln couldn’t imagine what someone might want from him other than the debt money, which he’d already dismissed as unlikely.

He took the phone into the bathroom with him in case LJ tried to call, then stripped off his filthy work clothes and got into the shower. The wound on his hand stung like a bitch whenever he got soap in it, but he’d had worse scrapes before and was thankful he still had both hands and all his digits. His boss, Earl, had lost three fingers on his left hand to a logging accident, and now wore his wedding band on a chain around his neck.

Linc got out of the shower and tightly bandaged his hand before he could bleed all over the towels. He kept one eye on the phone the whole time he dried off and dressed, but it remained stubbornly silent. Then he sat on his bed and stared at it a little longer while he tried to decide what to do next.

Aside from LJ himself, the only people who might be able to shed light on the situation were Lisa, LJ’s mother, and ‘Alex’, his mystery man. Lincoln was highly reluctant to call Lisa, not only because he wanted the line free in case LJ called, but because she would more than likely hang up the moment he identified himself. He’d known her jackass husband to do just that.

Lincoln’s relationship with LJ’s mother had been rocky even before their son was born, and she had always been uncomfortable letting him into LJ’s life. But she had been fair and allowed them time together most weekends while LJ was growing up. Things changed when she met her husband. Suddenly there were two voices to drown out Lincoln’s, and it became a battle to see LJ at all or even find out what was happening in his life. Lincoln hadn’t seen his son once since he’d been forced to leave Chicago a year ago. They had spoken on the phone a few times, but then LJ had fallen silent and it had taken Lincoln numerous nagging calls to get his whereabouts from Lisa. That was when he had learned that his son was in a mental institution, being treated for severe depression after taking an overdose of pills.

At that time it was probably just as well for everyone that there had been several states separating them, because Lincoln flew into such a rage that he may well have strangled Lisa _and_ her husband and burned their goddamn house down if he’d been anywhere in the vicinity. He’d been ready to fly out and see LJ the same day, but Lisa had flatly informed him that the hospital would refuse him access, and if he turned up she would have him dragged away forcibly if that was what it took. And she hadn’t hesitated to lay a generous slice of the blame for LJ’s condition with him. Lincoln had something of a chequered past, and it seemed convenient for LJ’s mother and stepfather to scapegoat him for her son’s illness.

If calling Lisa wasn’t a viable option, that meant the stranger was Lincoln’s best hope. He didn’t know the man’s real name or anything else about him – except that he was a liar and jumpy as hell, neither of which instilled much confidence – but if he was from out of town, Lincoln knew of a couple of likely places he might be staying. He put on his coat, scooped up his phone and car keys and headed for the front door. Before he could reach it the phone rang in his hand. He almost dropped it in his rush to answer.

“Dad?” The voice on the phone sounded small, scared, and unbearably far away.

“LJ, thank God.” Lincoln felt the rock that had been sitting on his heart lift a little. “Are you okay, buddy?”

“Yeah,” his son replied, though he didn’t really sound okay at all. “Dad, I only have a minute. Did you meet my friend yet?”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” So the guy hadn’t been lying about everything. “But he’s not who he said he is, LJ. He said he worked at the hospital, but that’s not true, is it?”

“No. But... he is from here.”

Lincoln frowned. “So he’s – what, he’s a _patient_?”

“Yes. But you can trust him.”

“Jesus, LJ—”

“Please, Dad. I need you to listen to him. Whatever they’ve been telling you all this time, it’s not true. They’ve been keeping you away from me on purpose.”

“What’s going on, LJ? What’s happened?”

“I can’t explain, not over the phone.” There was desperation in his voice when he added, “God, they never leave me alone in this place.”

“There’s someone with you now?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. It’s okay. Just tell me, are you safe?”

“Yes. For now, in here, I’m fine.”

“All right. And... this friend of yours will be able to tell me what’s going on?”

“Yes. Isn’t he with you?”

“Ah. Not exactly.” Lincoln paced over to the window. Rain was still pouring outside. “He showed up earlier, when I finished work, but then he freaked out over... I don’t know what. He ran off. Do you know where he would have gone?”

LJ sighed. “No. But he’ll come back. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes. All of this was his idea. He’s really smart, Dad.” LJ’s voice, already hushed, became quieter still. Lincoln headed away from the window to hear him better. “I know he’ll see it through,” LJ went on. “But he’s just... I guess it’s still hard for him to be around people. That’s all.”

“All right. Look, kiddo, is there anything about this guy I should know? Is he, I dunno, dangerous?”

LJ actually laughed a little at that. “No, he’s not. Just a little different. But you can trust him, I swear to you.”

“Okay. I will.” Lincoln closed his eyes and reached out a hand, wishing that he could touch his son, pull him into his arms. He was so far away, in every sense. “It’s so good to hear your voice, LJ.”

“You too.” There was a muffled sound of voices before LJ spoke again, and the panicky edge was back in his voice. “I can’t stay,” he said. “But – I miss you.”

“Me too,” Lincoln replied. He squeezed his eyes tighter closed. “I’ve missed you every single day.”

“You mustn’t believe any of the things they told you,” LJ said. He was crying now. “I love you, Dad.”

Lincoln put his hand over his mouth to keep a sob from escaping it. He hadn’t heard those words in what felt like an eternity. He had wondered if he’d ever hear them again.

“I love you too,” he said. He heard a male voice in the background telling LJ to hurry it up. “Be careful, son,” he added.

“You too,” LJ said. Then, in a voice lowered to a whisper, “ _Find Michael.”_

 


	3. Chapter 3

****

When Michael came to he was in the dark, lying on rough carpet. He was aware that he had not _woken up_ as such because he had not been asleep; rather his consciousness had been adrift somewhere, driven out of his body temporarily and leaving a more primitive part of his brain in command. This rebooting of his senses was not an unfamiliar experience.

He moved a little and his clothes felt damp and heavy on his limbs. Michael shivered in a sudden chill and sat up slowly, experiencing a lick of nausea as he moved. He looked around the darkened room. He could make out the shape of a bed and a lamp against the faint glow of a draped window. There was that musty smell in the air that places got when they spent most of the time unoccupied.

 _Motel room_ , he thought. He was in his motel room at the truck stop in Rockmond. Good. His memory hadn’t suffered too badly, which meant he probably hadn’t spaced out for very long. He sat with his head cradled gently in his hands as though it were made of glass, and went back to fitting the rest of the mental fragments together. The sickness he felt was withdrawal from his meds. He was wet because he’d been out in the rain. He thought back to his arrival at the truck stop that morning and worked his way forward to the last thing he could remember. Sitting in that coffee shop, looking out of a steamed-up window. Waiting to go and meet Lincoln Burrows.

His brain connected a face to that name, and suddenly the following events fell into place. _Oh, God_. He could not retrieve more than a few faint impressions of his race back to the motel from the logging company parking lot, but he remembered more than enough preceding it to feel crushed with humiliation and guilt. Sitting in Burrows’ passenger seat, being questioned and feeling like a deer caught in the headlights of the other man’s stare, his grip on himself becoming slippery... And so he’d bailed. He had failed in his one essential task. He’d successfully made it out of the hospital and all the way to the West Coast only to have a spectacular meltdown in Lincoln Burrows’ truck within around ninety seconds of meeting him.

He had let LJ down completely.

Michael was tempted to lie back down, pull the blankets from the bed over himself and sleep away his sickness and his shame. But the calm, rational part of him knew that it was a very bad idea for the scared, panicky side to seek such refuge when he was stranded so far from home. _At least wait until you’re back in Chicago before you lose it again_ , the calm Michael reproached. _You have a job to do first._ Finally the huddled, anxious Michael agreed and relinquished his control.

He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, then felt around for the bedside lamp and turned it on. Once his eyes were accustomed to the light he checked his watch. It was a little before eight. He should still have time to find something to eat and deliberate on his next step. He knew he couldn’t give up now after coming so far. But he would have to give some careful thought to how he should best approach Lincoln Burrows a second time, since the man had probably decided that he was a raving nutcase after today.

Michael got up and crossed the room, wondering why his body ached so badly, then remembered that he had probably run the best part of a mile getting back here. A small stack of neatly-folded clothing sat on a chair by the dresser where he had left it that morning after removing it from his backpack. He peeled off his soggy sweatshirt, jeans and socks and dressed in the dry clothes.

Someone knocked on his door.

Michael froze in the middle of pulling on a clean shirt. His first thought was, _They’ve found me_. But how? His heart began to pound. There was no reason why they should be looking for him so far from Chicago, and he’d been careful and used cash instead of a credit card to pay for bus tickets and the motel room, just to be safe... But oh God, maybe LJ had said something, they’d figured out he knew where Michael was going and made him tell them—

The knock came again. “Hello?” a man’s voice called.

Michael unknotted his nerves enough to sneak over to the door, where he held his breath and peered out through the spy hole. The outside of the building was poorly lit, and his visitor had moved so Michael could only make out the side of his head at first. Then he turned, and in the weak glow of the truck stop’s neon sign Michael caught a familiar profile. It was Lincoln Burrows.

Michael took a silent step back from the door. Was this a good thing or a bad?

“Hey,” Lincoln’s voice called through the closed door. “It’s Michael, right? I talked to LJ.” A pause. Michael’s unease kept him silent. So Lincoln now knew he had lied _and_ that he was an escaped mental patient, how wonderful. Would he call the police? Had he already done so? What if they were waiting with him right now, out of sight? Maybe he was angry at being deceived and had come by to teach Michael a lesson, the kind of lesson big, scary lumberjacks taught with their fists. Michael put a hand over his hammering heart and clenched his eyes shut.

“He said I can trust you,” Lincoln went on. “He couldn’t tell me over the phone what’s happening, but he said you could explain everything. Look, if you’re in there, I just need to know what’s going on with my son. Please.”

Michael breathed deeply. He had to go through with this. It was ridiculous to hide from this man when the sole purpose of his trip had been to find him. And while Burrows did sound on edge, he didn’t sound as though he was about to beat Michael to a bloody pulp.

Michael inched back towards the door and opened it slowly.

“Hi,” he said through the six-inch gap.

“Hi,” Lincoln replied. He looked back at Michael for a moment. “Um, d’you think I could come in?”

“Oh. Sure, sorry.” Michael shuffled aside and opened the door wider for the other man to enter.

Even though it had only been a couple of hours since they had first met, Lincoln looked very different. He was clean, for one thing, and no longer had that mean-and-moody look in his eye. Now he just looked tired and worried.

“How did you know I was here?” Michael asked sheepishly.

“There’s only a couple of places to stay around here,” Lincoln replied, taking a few steps into the room. “This is the first one you’d see on your way into town, so I tried here first. Told the manager you were a friend.”

Michael nodded. He noticed his discarded clothes still lying on the floor and quickly gathered them up and stashed them in a corner. When he looked back, Lincoln had taken a seat on the end of the bed, so Michael sat down on the chair opposite him.

“I drove around looking for you after you ran off,” Lincoln said. “Then I went home and called the hospital. Turns out Dr Alexander Mahone is on vacation for his wedding anniversary.” He looked pointedly at Michael. “In Hawaii.”

Michael looked down into his lap, silently cursing himself. “Right.”

“But I managed to speak to LJ,” Lincoln went on. “And he told me I can trust you.”

“You can,” Michael replied in earnest, meeting the other man’s eye. “I’m sorry about before. I just got a little... overwhelmed.” He stared at his knees again and cleared his throat. “I sometimes get these attacks when I’m anxious. And I was pretty nervous earlier. I’ve been feeling unwell, and I’d had a lot of coffee, which wasn’t such a good idea. And I haven’t really been around people in a while. Strangers, anyway.”

“Yeah, LJ said as much.” Michael could feel Lincoln watching him. “But we’re not strangers any more, are we?”

“No.”

“Okay. So can you tell me what’s been going on?”

Michael nodded. He paused for a moment as he considered where to start. “I’m not sure what you were told about why LJ was admitted to Fox River,” he said.

“Not much. Lisa – LJ’s mom – told me he was suffering from severe depression,” Lincoln said. He lowered his eyes and seemed to be closely examining the backs of his hands. Michael saw the fresh bandage and remembered the blood on Lincoln’s palm earlier. “His mom said he had, ah, taken a bunch of pills. That he tried to kill himself.” The deep rumble of Lincoln’s voice faltered on the last few words.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, when you don’t even know me,” Michael said, his own voice softer now. “But LJ’s mother lied to you.” Lincoln looked up at him. “It’s true that he’s depressed, very much so. And he did take an overdose, but... it wasn’t pills.” He struggled to meet Lincoln’s eye as he told him, “It was heroin.”

“What? No,” Lincoln said, his eyes suddenly sharp and unnerving again. He shook his head vehemently. “No way. LJ can’t be into drugs. He’s far too smart for that.”

“You’re right, he is smart,” Michael replied. “But he didn’t take those drugs willingly. He was coerced.”

“What do you mean, coerced?”

Michael cleared his throat and shifted a little in his seat. “How much do you know about LJ’s stepfather?”

“Paul?” Lincoln’s eyes narrowed. “Lisa met him when she started working at the Governor’s office. I always thought he was a slimy son of a bitch, but – are you telling me he had something to do with what happened to LJ?”

“I’m afraid so,” Michael said. “Paul Kellerman has this very effective public persona and everyone seems to think he’s the nicest guy on the planet. But the truth is, he’s a chameleon. He knows exactly how to sell himself, and he is extremely ambitious. As you probably already know, he’s worked his way up through the ranks of Governor Tancredi’s office and recently became his Chief of Staff. He’s determined to be governor himself some day. His ambition has made him ruthless, and twisted. LJ believes Paul only married his mother because it’s better for his public image to be seen as a family man. But at home he lets out the side that the public never sees.” Michael cleared his throat again. “He’s abusive. To both Lisa and LJ.”

Lincoln got to his feet, both hands balled into fists. Michael flinched at the look on his face. “You’re telling me that mother _fucker_ has been hurting my son? And I never knew about it? How long has this been going on?”

“A few years,” Michael replied. He wished Lincoln would sit back down; the way he was looming above him with that furious expression made him extremely nervous. “I think it started a couple of years after he and Lisa were married. It was all psychological at first, then it became physical, too.”

Lincoln walked over to the window and stood with both hands clapped to his head as though it might explode if he let go.

“The reason you never knew about it is because no one did. No one outside that house has known about it until now. Paul made sure of it. He knows exactly how to manipulate people, including his own family. He’s been poisoning people against LJ so that if he tries to talk, no one will believe a word of it. He has most of the staff at Fox River fooled. As a matter of fact, LJ being in the hospital is all part of Paul’s plan.”

Michael fell silent and watched Lincoln. He was afraid that if he kept on talking he might completely overload the other man, who already seemed to be on the verge of detonation. Eventually Lincoln lowered his hands and turned back to face Michael.

“His _plan_?”

“Paul has set it up to look as though LJ is unstable,” Michael said. He drew a deep breath. This next part of the story would be difficult to deliver. “A while back, maybe eighteen months ago, things got really bad at home. Paul hurt Lisa badly. LJ had gotten caught smoking pot with some of his friends at school. I don’t think he’d even done it before; it was just really bad luck that he got caught out that time. The school called Lisa and Paul in to tell them, and once they were back home Paul went ballistic. He said it would undermine his and Tancredi’s whole ‘zero-tolerance’ stance on drugs if it got out that his stepson was a pot head. He started laying into LJ pretty badly, and Lisa stepped in to protect him. Paul ended up almost strangling her.”

Lincoln had moved over to the door, and now he slid down with his back to it until he was sitting on the floor. Grief, horror and dazed disbelief all vied with anger in his expression.

“She was too afraid to go to the police,” Michael went on. “But LJ managed to record some of what happened on his cell phone. He eventually convinced his mom to go with him to report Paul. With her bruises and LJ’s video there was no way he could get away with it. But Paul caught up with them before they could get to the police station. He destroyed the video, and told them that if either of them ever tried to go to the authorities again, he would kill the other one. Said he’d make it look like an accident so no one ever knew. And he told LJ that if any other copies of the video should ever come to light, even if Paul ended up in prison, he would make sure that Lisa was found and killed. LJ was terrified.

“After that, Paul decided to use the fact that LJ had been caught smoking drugs to his advantage. Instead of trying to cover it up, he exploited it. A few months after the incident at school, he planted some drugs in LJ’s school bag and around his room to make it look like he was using and selling. He took LJ down to the police station himself, made a big show of being a genuine, wholesome guy who stood up for the same values in his own house that he did in the Governor’s Office.

“Once it was on police record that LJ supposedly had a drug problem, Paul had him exactly where he wanted. Anything LJ blamed on Paul could easily be deflected back onto him. It didn’t just keep LJ and Lisa in line, it helped Paul’s public image as a long-suffering parent.

“But as you already know, LJ is strong. He never stopped thinking about ways to get himself and his mother out of that situation. And I think Paul recognised that. With LJ coming up to eighteen, Paul felt threatened. He decided to act while LJ was still legally a minor. He, uh, set up the incident with the heroin.” Michael left that part deliberately vague. He wasn’t sure he could handle relaying exactly what LJ had told him, or the look in Lincoln’s eyes when he did.

“Anyone who ODs is put on suicide watch in hospital, and then they’re sent on to rehab or the courts or wherever,” he explained. “Once LJ had recovered, he saw a psychiatrist who looked at all his recent behaviour – the drugs, the arrest, social withdrawal, poor grades – and decided he should spend a few months in Fox River. Paul was playing the concerned dad and said he’d do whatever helped LJ get better, of course. But it worked out perfectly for him to have LJ locked up.

“I’m not sure if you know this, but Fox River has strong ties to Governor Tancredi’s office. His daughter is a psychiatrist there, and he’s donated large sums to the hospital in the past, helped them build new wards and so on. So to them, Paul Kellerman is a friendly face. He has a lot of influence there. The staff feed information back to him about LJ, control who he has contact with and so on. LJ doesn’t feel he can trust anyone. So he’s had to keep quiet about everything that’s happened to him.”

He stopped there to give Lincoln some time to process what he had been told. When Michael glanced over, Lincoln was staring into space, one hand over his mouth, and his eyes were glassy in the lamplight. Michael was reminded vividly of LJ, sitting on the floor in Michael’s room at the hospital with much the same pained, faraway look in his eyes as he recounted some of the story that had just been relayed to his father.

“I’ll kill him,” Lincoln said at last, more to himself than to Michael. His voice was strangely flat. “I’m gonna tear his fucking arms out of their sockets, and then I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch.”

Michael gulped. “Please don’t say that,” he said. “I know how angry you must be, but you have to think about LJ. He really needs you. If you go after Paul he’ll just have you put in jail, and LJ will be right back where he started.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Lincoln said, and looked up at Michael. “He beat my son. He gave him drugs. He almost _killed_ him.” Every word made his voice shake and his eyes glisten more brightly. “Am I supposed to let him get away with that?”

“Of course not. That’s the whole reason I’m here. We need to do something to put this right, so Kellerman can never hurt LJ again. But we need to do it right. We need a plan.”

Lincoln nodded, and abruptly got to his feet. “You’re right,” he said. “And I need a drink.” He turned to open the door.

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Michael blustered, getting up. “But I still have a lot to tell you.”

“I know,” Lincoln said. “You’re coming with me.” He walked out before Michael could argue, leaving the door ajar.

Michael stood blinking at the open door for a moment, then sighed heavily, picked up his coat and chased after Lincoln.


End file.
